Baking & Snack - May 2004 - 49

INFORMATION UPDATE

The Sweet Dimension
Polyols and
high-intensity
sweeteners
replace sucrose
and can alter
a food's
caloric density.

or millennia, bakers relied on
honey from bees to sweeten baked
foods. When Christopher Columbus
brought sugar cane to the New World,
the giant Asian grass ﬂourished, and sugar
became a commercial crop. In the mid1800s, Europeans learned how to extract
sucrose from sugar beets. Crystalline sucrose
then became a mainstay in the bakery.
During the 20th century, development
of corn syrups and sugars of various types
brought them to the forefront of bakery
use. In recent decades, new sweeteners
have come into prominence. These include
polyols, which contain fewer calories and
provide anti-cariogenic beneﬁts when
compared with sucrose, and high-intensity
sweeteners, which have essentially no caloric content at all.
POLYOLS
The structures of the monosaccharides
glucose (also called dextrose) and fructose
feature a reducing group. During baking,
these groups take part in the Maillard, or
browning, reaction to give crust color.
Although the disaccharide sucrose consists
of one glucose and one fructose, they are
connected through their reducing groups,
making sucrose a nonreducing sugar.
Polyols are sugars in which the reducing
group has been converted to a nonreducing alcohol group. Glucose, for example, is
hydrogenated to become a 6-carbon polyol:
sorbitol. Fermentation of glucose with a
speciﬁc microorganism forms a 4-carbon
polyol: erythritol. Hydrolyzed starch (corn
syrup) gives hydrogenated starch hydrolysate
(HSH), and hydrogenation of fully hydrolyzed
xylans such as larch gum yields xylitol. Other
polyols - lactitol, maltitol and mannitol
- are also commercially available.
Polyols have limited digestibility, so their
caloric contribution to foods is less than the

4 Cal per g of sugar or other digestible carbohydrates. Erythritol contributes only 0.2 Cal
per g, and the calorie content of the others is
generally in the range of 2 to 3 Cal per g. Their
sweetness is around 40% to 70% of sucrose.
A major use of polyols is in "sugar free"
candies and chewing gums. Glucose is fermented by oral bacteria, forming plaque on
tooth surfaces. This, plus the acids produced
by the bacteria, cause tooth decay or caries.
Replacing glucose or sucrose with a polyol
such as erythritol circumvents this process,
hence their popularity in confections.
In baked foods, polyols can be used to
reduce calories in conjunction with other
formula adjustments. Maltitol, sorbitol and
xylitol cause only a small rise in blood sugar
when they are consumed, so they are useful in making desserts and other foods for
diabetic diets.
A drawback of some polyols is their
noticeable laxative effect. Several of them
require a notice on food labels to this effect when the expected intake per day exceeds a limit established by the Food and
Drug Administration.

ᮡ Erythritol, the sweetener in this cheesecake,
contributes the fewest calories of the polyols, just
0.2 Cal per g.
CARGILL FOOD & PHARMA SPECIALTIES

NONTRADITIONAL SUGARS
Polydextrose is a synthesized polymer of
glucose, useful as a bulking and humectant
agent when sucrose is replaced by a highintensity sweetener in a reduced-calorie
formulation. It contributes 1 Cal per g and
has no sweetness. It has a laxative effect, so
a label notice is required if more than 5 g
are present per serving.
Tagatose, recently afﬁrmed to be Generally Recognizes as Safe (GRAS), is sometimes called left-handed sugar because it is
a stereoisomer of fructose. It has a sweetness
intermediate between glucose and sucrose
and contributes 1.5 Cal per g. Functionally
similar to sucrose in terms of bulking (structure), humectancy and texture (tenderness),
it is approved for a wide variety of bakery
products but carries upper use limits of
3 g per serving for RTE cereals and 30%
formula weight basis in icings and glazes.

May 2004 / BAKERS PRODUCTION MANUAL / 49

Baking & Snack - May 2004

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